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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

Alan Perlis

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Alan Perlis
Age: 67 †
Born: 1922
Born: April 1
Died: 1990
Died: February 7
Computer Scientist
Mathematician
University Teacher
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Alan Jay Perlis
Alan J. Perlis
Doe
Pragmatists
Precede
Follows
Programming
Complexity
Simplicity

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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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You think you KNOW when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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Every reader should ask himself periodically “Toward what end, toward what end?”—but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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